More Spring Happenings

This is the season where the garden changes visibly every single day. There's so much going on!

 

All kinds of flowers are blooming, and each day old flowers close up while new ones open.

 

There are monarch caterpillars of all sizes.

 

This is a close-up picture of a Citron flower. Citrons are a very old variety of citrus. The fruits are not particularly good to eat, but the peel of the fruit and the flowers are very fragrant.

 

Here's a very young Cloudless Sulphur butterfly caterpillar. He's very tiny, but he's already eating holes in the leaves of the senna tree.

 

This picture may look like the leaf has an eye-stalk like a snail, or maybe an antenna like a moth -- but it's really the egg of a Green Lacewing. Lacewings are pretty green insects that tend to fly around at night. Lacewing larva are considered very good for gardens, since they eat huge numbers of garden pests like aphids, thrips, mealy bugs, and leafhoppers.

 

Nasturtiums are not only colorful, but edible too. They're spicy!

 

Do you think this spider has a grayish abdomen? The answer may surprise you! It's actually a brown Wolf Spider, and that round gray thing is an egg sac that she's carrying around with her!

Springtime

 It has been a very dry winter in Archie's Garden - we have only had one or two good rains. Nevertheless, the flowers feel springtime coming on, and they're blooming. Here are the Irises and a variety of Nasturtiums showing off.








We at Archie's Garden change our minds each year which flower is the true symbol of Spring.

 Different flowers come at different times: usually, the Daffodils are among the first to bloom.







Sometimes the Toad Flax, Lupine, or California Poppies will be first, but they often bloom all together.

The Freesias are not the first to bloom, but they are not shy about filling the garden with color.






This year, however, Archie casts his vote for the Wisteria. This vine can really take over, but for a few brief days every Spring, the delicate flowers are extraordinarily beautiful.

The flowers are not the only ones celebrating the coming of Spring. This fellow was seen wandering around near the potted plants late at night. At first, he looks like a twig. If you look closer, he looks like a big worm. But then if you look really closely, you'll see he's a salamander!